There has been found a need in the item processing art to locally contain processed items, e.g., to prevent stray materials (contaminants) from negatively affecting processing equipment or processing items (e.g., wafers). Background and/or example embodiments of the present invention will use a semiconductor processing testing or experimenting with a new resist material (applied to a wafer as a substrate) and the application of extreme ultraviolet (EUV; wavelength in a range of 10 to 14 nanometers) processing light thereto as an explanation example. However, practice of the present invention is by no means limited thereto.
More particularly, in beginning discussion, an example experimental/test material (such as a new resist material) may release potential contaminants (e.g., gas(es), splatters, eruptions, etc.) therefrom when EUV and other processing conditions are applied thereto. Such contaminants may be released or ejected into the environment surrounding the material, such as into the internal chamber of a semiconductor processing machine (e.g., plasma processing machine). A problem with the aforementioned contaminants is that they have the potential to migrate, deposit on and/or contaminate other internal areas of the machine, and/or neighboring items (e.g., wafers).
Semiconductor processing machines tend to be expensive, intricate and difficult to clean. Unless the difficult cleaning is performed after contamination, a wide variety of subsequent problems may result. For example, deposited contaminants may cause permanent damage to the machine by chemical reactions such as etching. Expensive sensors within the machine may become permanently contaminated and damaged. As another example, residual contaminants within the processing machine may again become mobile during subsequent processing and may subsequently contaminate other items (e.g., semiconductor wafers, test materials, etc.) processed within the machine.
One example background approach to avoid the above-mentioned problems (with the present experimental/testing example) is to avoid experimenting/testing with the new materials within an actual (on-line) manufacturing semiconductor processing machine, and to instead have/use specialized testing machines/facilities which are dedicated to experiment/testing. For example, given the relatively low cost of UV light sources, an off-line UV testing machine/chamber may be built and used to process experimental/test materials.
A first disadvantage with this test machine/chamber approach is that it adds significant additional costs to manufacturing. A further disadvantage is that testing may be performed with unrealistic processing conditions that differ significantly from conditions that may exist within the on-line semiconductor processing machines. For example, an on-line manufacturing machine may have an internal chamber pressure of several atmospheres, whereas the testing machine might perform testing only at atmospheric pressure. As a result of differing conditions, unreliable test results may be obtained. For example, the test material may not result in any contaminants when processed at atmospheric pressure, but may release or eject significant contaminants when processed at several atmospheres of pressure.